Not a soul around.

[reddragdiva]

• Luvverly pic of eyeliner297 and I from B-Movie by marchosias444.

• A new Vista victim actually getting Microsoft tech support to admit this shit just doesn't work.

You know the Eastercon Lurgy, the puking and shitting bug that hits two to three days after the actual infection? That'll be the norovirus (1, 2, 3, 4). May I suggest for Whitby a trend toward medical fetishism in costuming, i.e. gloves and masks everywhere. Including bed.

I am ill in bed with apparent utter exhaustion (though not puking and shitting). I dragged myself in Monday and Tuesday and failed to make today. No Freda as yet.

Comments

[sbp.livejournal.com]

"Imagine all the vacuum in the universe applied to Bill Gate's asshole. That's how much Vista sucks."

Heh.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Indeed - the number of friends who went down with that lurgy is considerable. Not to mention my only wife!

It was interesting to watch the amateur epidemiologists attempting to work out the common foodstuff that all had consumed. Since the sufferers included the vegans, and there was no discernable common eating place frequented, the conclusion ended up that it couldn't have been food poisoning, and Norwalk or its sibs became the assumed cause.

(It was a bit late for food poisoning - we left Chester Monday lunchtime, and bellingwoman was still fine when I left for Oxfnord on Tuesday evening.)

If we'd all been eating the same stuff, and the infection had broken out twelve hours earlier, it probably would have been blamed on the food.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

May I suggest for Whitby a trend toward medical fetishism in costuming, i.e. gloves and masks everywhere. Including bed.

Entertaining though the thought of goths in scrubs is, the best thing to do is wash hands thoroughly after using the toilet, and before and after handling food, don't kiss anyone who says they have been feeling unwell, and make sure you have plenty of clean towels and underwear, and access to a washing machine with a hot setting.

[reddragdiva]

"don't kiss anyone who says they have been feeling unwell"

See, that one won't save you, because it's infectious for two or three days before symptoms show. Yay!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

It won't save you, but it's still a sensible preventative measure.

Also, don't share food - eating off the same plate as someone who has the virus is a surefire way to catch it.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

The problem is that you'll have to follow these rules effectively forever, since you can never know whether anyone around you may be infected. You could limit your precautions to the prime 'flu and norovirus seasons, but that's still a large chunk of the year.

An alternative is to actively flout these guidelines and try to train your immune system up instead. Of course, you'd want to do so in such a way as not to cause other people problems, so washing hands after going to the loo will stop you leaving germs on the door handles and the like. And if you have an immune system that isn't trainable any more, well, don't try training it.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Most of them (apart from not kissing strangers or sharing food), are things that everyone ought to be doing all of the time anyway. You'd have to be pretty filthy not to wash your towels and pants on hot, or wash your hands after a pee! Various sensible science and medical types have pointed out that these basic hygiene precautions are the best way to guard against the much-prophesied 'killer flu epidemic'.

Exposing yourself to germs to build up immunity can work, but usually only at the expense of catching the diseases in the first place. It's not like vaccination - you can't measure the dose you're going to get.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

"You'd have to be pretty filthy not to wash your towels and pants on hot"

You what? If you're using biological detergent then it won't work over 40 degrees, so hot is pointless, and non-bios are formulated to work at 40 too. The only reason to do a hot wash is if you suspect headlice or similar on your bedding.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Eew to the virus. I'm glad I'm not a sci fi geek. Yay to the medical costuming. The BFC needs thee.

Tis a cute pic. You are a slut sir (but we all knew that anyway..)

Still thinking of you all and Freda. I've been compulsively reloading LJ for news..

[reddragdiva]

I think I'll be lucky to make BFC!

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Me too. I was more thinking that the BFC needs the costuming ;)

[miss-amethyst.livejournal.com]

Aw that's a gorgeous pictures of you and Abi!! =)

[absinthea.livejournal.com]

Get thee to a pharmacy or natural foods store and load up on acidophilus. Seriously. Like 60-100 billion mixed cultures a day (usually taken in tablets of 10-20 billion mixed cultures each). We had 2 bouts of norwalk virus hit us 2 years ago...I was unlucky enough to get the damn sickness both times. Acidophilus was the *only* thing to help speed recovery.
Keep yourself well hydrated and take the acidophilus. Stay away from dairy products at least for several days after you are feeling well (dairy acts as an inflammatory agent, especially to tender, healing gastrointestinal tissues).

[arkady.livejournal.com]

He hasn't got the norovirus (thankfully); just the usual cold he never quite manages to shake off, aggravated I suspect by hayfever - the tree pollen has been bad enough today to even affect me - and I don't, as a rule, suffer from hayfever!

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

Professionally, I have to support OSX, XP, 2003 Server, 2000 Server, and a few NT's lurking here and there. In an effort to be ready for the next wave I've been using Vista on my workstation PC. Honestly? I've actually grown used to Vistas interface. Unlike XP which I immediately switched to Classic and still do use like that. The blog you linked to is shocking, but doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Say what you like abotu Apples use of DRM, but dear lord, at least it works between versions of iTunes over different OS platforms. Of course most of my music is still purchased on that old silvery DRM free format. One thing I did note...
Simply hitting the windows/start button, or the windows key on the keyboard and typing whatever it is you want to run (cmd, regedt32, mmc, etc). And it just runs. type photoshop, it runs, anything, it runs. It's pretty intelligent and uses common sense. Stop me when you fall over from shock of MS doing anything to do with common sense. Office 2007... took me a little longer to get used to. But it again uses some sort of logic, and now I zip around with the context menus and have gotten used to it quite happily. So I have to wonder how someone who crows about being an alpha geek, and being experienced, and not being a newbie, could so easily be foxed by a new GUI. Isn't that what geeks do? adapt to new challenges as they face them?

Just some thoughts.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

What he said.

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

And i said it all without claiming to be an Alpha Geek too.

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

I once tried one of the Microsoft-DRM stores, back before iTunes became available in Australia. The whole experience struck me as being typical vintage Microsoft: deeply user-hostile.

So it does not surprise me that it continues to be so.

As to John Ringo and his claims to be an "Alpha Geek", seriously, if the interface changes in Vista throw him, then he can give up his title right now. I can see Office 2007 putting him off at first, but there's absolutely no reason why he can't remove it and install Office 2003 -- that works just fine, and if he hasn't even thought to try that before whinging about the new UI in O2007, then, well...

Vista itself I mostly like, but I've been lucky enough to be dealing mostly with supported hardware and I'm not one to scream blue murder if someone improves the user interface. But it'd be so much nicer without the DRM crapware, and I imagine my impression of it would change radically if I were dealing with hardware and software where that comes into play.

(Anyway, isn't John Ringo one of those wannabe-Nazi mil-SF writers? Is it any great surprise he both proclaims himself to be an "Alpha Geek" and is also dumb enough to have bought DRM-encumbered music and then not stripped that off? His ravings remind me of Jerry Pournelle, and that is so not a compliment. To either of them!)

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the photos. I'm upset I couldnt go to B-Movie now.

I'm especially impressed with the photos including the lighting.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Actually, that blog entry failed to impress me. He uses Word, IE, WMP and MSN Music-and he writes his long, ranting blog entries on MySpace. FFS. He also seems to think that the world should revolve around him...

...and I've still not had any problems with Vista.

[reddragdiva]

OT: I am so not making Betty Ford tonight - I'm off work again and I feel like I'm being stabbed in my left ear and my head is pounding and it hurts to talk. Bah!

[reddragdiva]

And yeah, the blog entry writer is clearly a zeta-geek, rather than "ex-alpha." But these are the m0r00ns it's supposedly all for ...